


on his dying bed (at the break of day)

by amosanguis



Series: creature AUs [33]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Alternate Universe - Highlander Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Buried Alive, Canonical Character Death, Feelings, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Gen Work, Highlander Immortals, POV Multiple, Post-Canon, Spoilers, so many spoilers, title from a song, we're off to the rodeo y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-26 09:28:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16678990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: There hadn't been a body for Charles to bury.





	1. Arthur

**Author's Note:**

> Anything you need to know about Highlander Immortals is explained in the fic.
> 
> Title from "Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie" sung by William Elliot Whitmore because that lyric is perfect and I've been crying for two days, y'all.

-z-

 

Charles looks away when he tells John that he went back and buried Arthur; if John’d been paying attention, he would have noticed – instead he’s caught up in the picture Charles is painting him, imagining a hill and an evening sun, thinking it wouldn’t be such a bad resting place.

Charles looks away so he doesn’t tell John the rest.

Charles looks away so he doesn’t tell John that, up there on that mountaintop, there hadn’t been a body to bury.

 

-x-

 

Arthur wakes with a gasp, the sun he’d died watching rise was now high in the sky – just almost at its peak.

He lays there, in his own blood and waste, listens for rattling in his lungs or for the shouting of the hunting law. But nothing happens. Instead all he hears is the vultures overhead and the distant call of an elk.

He sits up and is surprised by how much he’s _not_ hurting. He’s sore, but only the kind of sore that happens after a day’s long ride. Pain had been a constant companion of his for weeks, months, even, and now it was gone – leaving Arthur feeling almost young again.

 

-

 

The law’s around, yes, but they’re easier to outmaneuver when he’s feeling as good as he is. He makes his way back to where his and John’s horses had fallen, strokes Buell’s nose one last time before he grabs the saddle bags and what guns he can carry.

He doesn’t have much in the way of provisions and he’d given all his money away. Even his damn treasure maps were in the satchel he’d given to John.

Arthur shifts the gear he’s carrying.

The first thing he needed to worry about was finding himself a horse and a nearby river to clean himself up in.

 

-

 

A week and then another have passed and Arthur’s caught himself a mustang, bringing her up to Hamish’s old place to break her. He hunts and fishes, selling off what he doesn’t eat to the trapper – and doing what he can to otherwise keep himself out of sight. His lets his beard and his hair grow long, lets his clothing fall into a bit of ruin – all to add to his disguise – as he steadily tries to regain the weight he lost while he was sick.

Arthur doesn’t know how, but the TB is gone. And while a part of him is thankful for this second chance, he’d been ready to go. He’d made his peace with it. And now he’s back. He’s alive and his long recent days of silence still haven’t been long enough for him to decide whether he’s happy about the fact.

As he stares out at O’Creagh’s Run, the still waters moved only occasionally by a rowdy pike, Arthur dreams about chasing after the others. About settling close to John and Abigail just to watch Jack grow; hunting once more with Charles; vetting anyone coming for Tilly’s hand; he even finds himself missing Pearson’s sporadic sea stories.

But they’re just fantasies.

He’s said his goodbyes already and he doesn’t think he could do it again in case this new spark of life goes out.

 

-

 

Arthur is hunting a big bull moose in Roanoke Valley and it’s a testament to his focus that he doesn’t hear the horse hooves until the horse and its rider are very nearly on top of him.

Arthur is kneeling just behind a tree – all of his focus on the bull drinking at the river – the scope of his rifle up to his eye as he begins to creep forward, trying to line up that perfect shot. He’s just about to squeeze the trigger when a shrill neigh startles him – Arthur jumps backwards as the horse rears, kicking out its front legs as, in that same moment, his index finger involuntarily flexes, finishing the trigger squeeze.

“Control your animal,” Arthur shouts, his temper combining with the adrenaline of the hunt and almost being trampled.

“Why don’t you—” the horse is back on all four legs and Arthur finds himself staring at Charles and all Arthur can think is how much he wishes he could run.

The silence and the tension hangs thick between them before Charles is slowly sliding off his horse, keeping one hand on the animal as if using it as an anchor. There are tears in Charles’s eyes, and something like hurt.

“I went back for you,” Charles says. “I was—I was gonna bury you proper.”

Arthur can’t deny that there’s tears in his own eyes, now, too, as his throat constricts and his body moves of its own accord as he steps forward and pulls Charles in for a hug. Because, of them all still breathing, _of course_ Charles would make sure Arthur had a proper burial.

“I wouldn’t’ve left you out there,” Charles says into Arthur’s shoulder.

“Thank you, Charles,” and it takes all of Arthur’s willpower to make the words break free from that tightness still clutching at his throat.

Then Charles is pulling back and his eyes are boring deep into Arthur’s as he asks, “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

 

-

 

They ride back to O’Creagh’s Run, keeping off the roads as much as they can as Arthur fills Charles in on all that he does(n’t) know. Arthur talks about it until he doesn’t have anything else to say, but then he keeps talking. He tells Charles everything he’s felt, all that he’s been fighting – and Charles listens to everything, takes it all in.

And when the words have finally been exhausted and Arthur’s laid everything bare, he and Charles are staring out at the lake in the golden light of the evening sun.

“I’ve traveled a lot, my friend,” Charles says, hesitating slightly, picking his words carefully. “I’ve heard stories—stories about dead men who come back. Men who swing then crawl their way out of their graves. Men who carry swords instead of guns. And, when they fight each other, these men who can’t stay dead, lightning usually follows.”

Arthur blinks at Charles. “What the fuck does any of that mean?”

Charles huffs a laugh and puts his hands up, leaning backwards in his chair and shifting so an ankle rested on his knee. “I don’t know, Arthur,” he says, turning his eyes back out to the lake, “I don’t know. I’d thought they were only stories.” He looks at Arthur. “But now I’m not so sure.”

 

-

 

Charles stays three days before Arthur sends him on his way.

“People are going to notice if there’s two people living here instead of just one,” Arthur says, giving a gentle shove to Charles’s shoulder.

“How much longer do you think you can hide here?” Charles asks.

“Oh, I’ll be gone before winter settles in, that’s for sure,” Arthur says. “Then it’ll be time to head south – maybe New Austin or Mexico. I haven’t decided just yet. I still gotta figure out a way to get through Blackwater.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage,” Charles says with a smirk as he climbs onto the back of his horse. “It was good seeing you again, brother.”

Arthur, not quite trusting his voice, just nods and raises his hand, watching with blurred vision as Charles gallops away.

 

-

 

Arthur does figure it out.

 

-

 

He spends time in Armadillo and then Rathskeller Fork. He breaks horses for money, rounds up the pretty ones in the wild that he knows’ll sell for a decent price; he finds another gold bar and the money from that has him set for a trip down to Chuparosa.

He still tries to stick to the outskirts, staying in people’s periphery instead of their immediate line of sight.

And, for the most part, it works.

He drifts up and down, over and across the San Luis River – going wherever his horse’ll take him – thinking that, maybe, just maybe, he’s finally been able to outrun his ghosts.

 

-

 

It’s 1910 and Arthur’s not sure what wild hair has gotten hold of him, but he finds himself riding back up and through Blackwater, passing a homestead he _knew_ hadn’t been there the last time he’d ridden through, and heading into the Grizzlies.

It felt like something was pulling him there.

He’s just shrugging into a coat when he feels something like lightning sliding under his skin – alighting on every nerve with a full-body shiver.

“What the f—” he starts, but then he catches sight of a rider on the trail just ahead of him.

A rider who looks like they were just stopped dead in their tracks as they look over their shoulder – and stare right at Arthur. Slowly, the rider turns their horse and begins towards Arthur.

“Can I help you?” Arthur calls out before the rider can get too close.

The rider opens their arms wide, “I’m unarmed.”

“I’m not,” Arthur snaps, putting his hand on the butt of his pistol, “so you be a good boy and be on your way.”

The rider cocks his head to the side, his eyes piercing as he eyes Arthur up.

“Oh,” he says, “you must be new?”

“I think you’re the new one here, mister, because—”

The rider interrupts, “Tell me, sir, have you died recently?”

 

-

 

His name is Clay and he has all of the answers that Arthur didn’t know to need. Clay is big and blond and rides a tall palomino mare. He tells Arthur about the Immortals and the Game and the Rules, about how lucky he is no one’s come for his head before he could find a teacher.

Then, for the better part of the next year, Clay shows him how to wield a sword.

Arthur never does quite get the hang of it, but he eventually gets to the point where Clay’s sure he can last long enough to find himself a way out of whatever fight he’s in, and then announces that Arthur’s training is over.

 

-

 

It’s 1912 and Arthur is reading about the news of the Titanic in the saloon in Thieves’ Landing when a familiar looking shape settles at his table. It’d been months since they’d last seen each other, and years more before that.

“John’s dead,” Charles says. “Used up and then gunned down by the law.”

Arthur closes his eyes. He tries not to think about them all so much – not like he used to, not with this new reality he’s settling into. But that doesn’t stop the hurt.

“I’m worried about Jack,” Charles says. “So’s Abigail. He’ll want revenge soon as Abigail’s got her back turned.”

“What are you going to do?” Arthur asks, his voice quiet.

“For right now, I’m just going to keep an eye on him,” Charles answers, rubbing at his forehead. “Make sure the boy doesn’t do anything foolish.”

“Tell him stories about us and our counted dead,” Arthur says, turning back to his newspaper, “that should calm him right down.”

“Abigail and I both tried that,” Charles says with a sigh. “Didn’t seem to work. He’s young and filled with hot blood; he thinks he’s invincible.”

Arthur snorts. “Didn’t we all?”

 

-

 

Arthur watches as industrialization takes over and the West fades away, the ideal of it chopped up into small, sanitized pieces and sold as novels and movies and, later, television. Arthur even finds himself working on some of the sets of those movies and shows as a horse wrangler, trying not to laugh at the actors as they deliver lines that would’ve gotten them shot on the spot, probably by Arthur himself.

He keeps in touch with Clay as best he can and dodges any other of their kind who comes calling. He gets himself a small ranch – and spends a lot of time laughing about how his younger self had balked at the prospect – and raises horses for first Hollywood, then the rodeo circuit.

He’s just unloading two broncs for the auction chute when he feels that electricity under his skin and he can’t help but stop where he’s at and look around.

“Hey,” a voice calls out from across the barn.

And the tenor of it – for a second, he’s back in 1899, standing on a freezing mountaintop with blood filling his lungs and—

Arthur turns.

“Just when I thought I was rid of you,” Arthur jokes, _tries_ to joke, as he drops the horses’ leads and spreads his arms open wide, making it only two steps forward before John Marston is crashing into him.

 

-z-

 

End.


	2. John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Marston wakes up wrapped in canvas, buried underneath six feet of dirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--Please make a note of the additional tags.  
> \--Note that there is a lot of handwaving of a lot of things. Just go with it.

-z-

 

John Marston wakes up wrapped in canvas, buried underneath six feet of dirt. He tries to struggle free, tries to just _breathe_ – but there’s no air and he passes out.

 

-

 

John Marston wakes up wrapped in canvas, buried underneath six feet of dirt.

He has just enough time to think: _Fuck_. He tries to scream, but there’s nothing in his lungs to make the sound.

 

-

 

John Marston wakes up wrapped—

He tries to—

 

-

 

John Marston—canvas—six feet of dirt—

 

-

 

John Mar—

— _scream_ , _God_ , he just needs to—

 

-x-

 

“Professor! I think I got something over here!”

 

-x-

 

John Marston wakes up and there’s a scream and his eyes fly open and, this time, there’s no darkness and there’s no canvas and there’s no dirt – there’s just the sun coming through the awning and he’s on a table and he realizes that he’s not the one that screamed.

John tries to stand, but his legs quickly give out from under him. He fights to remember how to walk even as he takes in deep lungfuls of oxygen.

John is still trying to find his legs when he hears someone approaching—

“What the fuck?” she’s saying, mostly to herself in a shaky whisper. “What the fuck? What the fuck? Whatthe _fuck_?”

John looks over to his right, sees a middle-aged black woman and his first thought—

“Tilly?” he asks, cautiously and achingly hopeful. There’s still dirt in his eyes but he, god, it _has_ to be her. What he would give to see a familiar face after all his time in the ground—nevermind that it would be odd for her to come for him—

Before he can chase the thought, the woman is crouching down in front of him, just out of reach – _Smart_ , John can’t help but think – and she’s looking at him with a mix of wonder and fear as she says:

“No; my name is Dr. Mary Sutton.” She’s still looking at him and John’s getting that itch like he’s being assessed and graded, not unlike the looks he’d get from Dutch when Dutch’d told him to try something on his own for the first time. “What’s your name? How’d you get in the ground like that? You were _dead_ – I know that you were d—”

“One question at a time, lady,” John snaps, because his head is spinning and he can’t quite catch to her rapid-fire words. “My name is—”

 

-

 

Dr. Sutton, it turns out, is an anthropologist, hired by a big box store to survey a recently bought plot of land for anything of archaeological significance before construction began.

Sutton and her team – who’d already been dismissed for the day, conveniently just minutes before John had woken – had been out to the area four times already, and had found the remains of three individuals, with one of the remains generating far more feedback from ground-penetrating radar, indicating that there was more than just bones – there was flesh, too – despite there being no obvious recent disruption of the soil.

John is just saying that technology has come quite a long way in the time he’s been buried.

“And when was that?” Dr. Sutton asks.

“1911,” John answers.

The date is backed up when Dr. Sutton darts off to a large table covered with different items – one of them an old and deteriorating leather journal that John recognizes instantly as the one Arthur had given to him – Abigail and Jack must’ve buried it with him. And that sets off a whole new conversation – questions from Dr. Sutton that John answers as best he can. It’s how he finds out that he died in one century and woke up in another – and the year’s 2009.

He’s missed wars and the advent of television and humanity landing on the moon and whole genres of music; a black man was president and technology had evolved so that people could reach other instantly – no pen and paper needed – and whatever question they had could be answered with a device just at their fingertips.

It’s.

It’s a lot to take in.

He’s just wondering how he’s going to process everything when his stomach gives a loud rumble – reminding him he hasn’t eaten in nearly a hundred years and he ought to do something about it.

Dr. Sutton hears the noise and walks him over to her truck where she pulls out a bag filled with a miscellany of clothing she has him pick from until they can get into town. She then takes him back to her hotel room where she orders room service as he showers – which, after a few false starts, he figures out.

They’re sitting at the small table in Dr. Sutton’s room, eating, when she looks at John, asks, “Who is Tilly?”

It throws John for a second, before he remembers that it was Tilly Dr. Sutton had reminded him of, it had been Tilly John had thought he’d been looking at – and an ache seizes John’s chest.

He’d gone up to see her a few times – after Arthur was gone – to check on her and her new baby and the husband she coyly kept from him. He wonders if she’d have introduced that mystery husband to Arthur? They’d always been closer. Whenever Arthur was in camp, the two could be seen with their heads bent close together, talking over their troubles over a plate of Mr. Pearson’s stew.

After Abigail and Jack had been taken and returned, John had always meant to make another trip up – had plans to even bring Jack with him this time. But time had gotten away from him and then there’d been no time left at all as he faced down the law and the United States Army one last time, the memories of it all splashed over with his and Uncle’s blood.

“A gangmate of mine,” John answers, clearing his throat before trying to talk around that ache in his chest. “She was something else. One of the few of us to make it out.”

John stands, picks up the old and tattered journal from where it’d been gently placed on the dresser next to the television – the one thing he had left that could connect him to his past – and carefully flips through its pages as he settles once again at the table. Once he finds what he’s looking for, he sets the journal down in front of Dr. Sutton.

“This is her,” he says. “Last I’d heard from her she’d settled down and started a family. I wasn’t around long enough to see what else she got up to.”

Dr. Sutton smiles down at the sketch. “You drew this?” she asks, obviously expecting a yes.

“Heavens, no,” John says with a wry smirk before (carefully) flipping towards the pages in the back, where his own doodles were, explaining as he went. “This journal belonged to someone else – he and Tilly were closer than she and I was. He, uh, he gave this to me. Just before he died. I tried to carry it on,” he continues, with a stilted wave of his hand, “but I never had the way with words that Arthur did. Nor his skill with a pencil.”

“If this was buried with you,” Dr. Sutton says, choosing her words carefully, “this Arthur must’ve been pretty important to you.”

John gives Dr. Sutton a small, sad smile, the same one he wore whenever Jack asked after the man who’d taken him fishing once, before he turns back to his food, says, “Like a brother.”

 

-

 

Dr. Sutton is gone to the survey site, leaving John in her hotel room to watch television to help him get to know his new world – she was ready to spin a story to her students about how that third body must’ve been some weird kind of prank – when John feels an electrical hum under his skin.

 

-

 

John doesn’t know much about this new century, but he’d assumed that swords were something that had been phased out of fighting way before he’d even been born.

A black man named Washington Wyatt, who fights with a US Cavalry sabre, fills John in on the Immortals and what’s to be expected in exchange for immortality. He offers to be John’s teacher and John decides that there isn’t much to lose and, after scribbling out a quick thank-you note to Dr. Sutton, John grabs his journal and leaves with Wyatt.

 

-

 

He runs with Wyatt for several years and all he learns is that the new world he’d woken up into is too much – there’s so much noise and information and all of it is clamoring for attention.

Wyatt sets him up with a cell phone and shows him how to drive a truck and order a pizza; he also gets paperwork for John from a company who “handles this sort of thing, when one of us needs a new identity; welcome to the world John Milton.”

“Will it pass muster?” John asks, eyeing his new social security card and birth certificate.

“They’re legit enough on the surface that they’ll get you a driver’s license,” Wyatt says. “The government, even if they’re not willing to admit it, know about Immortals and know what companies like this one do for them and they turn a blind eye. The exchange is that we keep our heads down.” Wyatt smirks. “So to speak.”

John huffs a laugh.

“Now giddy up, cowboy,” Wyatt says, pulling John up and off the couch and herding him towards the front door, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“What kind of surprise?” John asks warily even as he grabs his hat from the hook and his boots from their place beside the door.

“We’re gonna get you a state ID for now with that paperwork, we can work on driver’s license later, and _then_ ,” Wyatt grabs his keys and his own boots and lowers his voice to a whisper, “we’re goin’ to the rodeo.”

 

-

 

The smell of stock, of horses and cattle and sheep, hits John like an unexpected punch to the gut before he and Wyatt have even stepped foot into Scissortail Rodeo Arena and he spares a moment to wonder whatever happened to his animals – if Jack and Abigail were able to come back for the horses or the cattle, or if they had just took what was on their backs and ran.

(John and Dr. Sutton had talked in the months after John had left with Wyatt, after he’d been set up with a phone, and she would text him pictures of little things that she’d found around what remained of Beecher’s Hope – some things he recognized, most he didn’t.

Sutton assured him that Abigail and Uncle would be laid back to rest right where they had been found – the store that was going up could be moved a few dozen feet over and they’d be willing to put up a memorial plaque telling the history of the area, if he’d like?

John had stared at that text – hadn’t been able to text her back right away as the memories swept him away. Bullets, blood, screaming. The story of John’s life no matter how hard he tried.

 _That’d be nice, thank you_ , he finally sends. Then he asks, _Did you ever find a another grave? I had a son and I’m not quite sure where he ended up._

 _If I find him, you’ll be the first to know_ , Dr. Sutton answers immediately.

 _Thanks_.)

John settles into the rodeo scene straight away – finally surrounded by a group of people who, when they talked, made sense. They spoke John’s language. And not even a hundred years passing by could change the language of a horse – their excited whinnying to get to work drawing John to them like a moth to a flame, and it settles something inside of him he hadn’t realized needed settling.

Beside him, Wyatt grins wide and throws his arm over John’s shoulders and says, “Sorry I didn’t think of this sooner.”

John looks at him and smiles and says, “I think I’ve finally found a home.”

 

-

 

John works as a pickup man at any rodeo that needs one, mostly drifting between Scissortail, Triple Vortex Rodeo Ring, and Trophy Rodeo, borrowing horses from the stock contractors he easily makes friends with and until he can afford to put together his own string of three – stabling one at each ring he works at. He’s looking for a fourth horse, when Teo, a stock contractor at Triple Vortex, reminds him about the auction to be held next month.

“You’re in luck, too,” Teo says, settling in a chair as he watches John run a curry comb over a buckskin gelding, John’s first horse in his new life, “there’s stock coming up from the Kilgore ranch. They’ll be pricier, but they’ll be worth every penny and I’m not just saying that because I work with them.”

John’s heard the name Kilgore before – damn near any horse housed in this particular barn seen bucking high or running fast or pulling tight was usually commented on with a “well, what’d you expect? That there’s a Dead or Alive horse, son, that’s a Kilgore horse.”

“I’ve always wanted to catch a glimpse of the man with the legendary horses,” John says.

“I never knew Tacitus,” Teo says, looking down at the thermos in his hands and taking a drink, missing the way John’s hesitates for a second, “but his son is a decent man. Arthur. I’ll introduce y’all, if you like?”

When Teo looks back up, John has his composure back and he’s smiling and stepping away from the buckskin, giving the animal a gentle pat. “Yeah, I think I would,” John says.

 

-

 

It’s two days before the auction and John is watching the monitors from the security desk as countless livestock trailers roll in to unload. The people of the security department couldn’t seem to get enough of John’s fascination with the system, so they allowed him to come and go (within reason) in exchange for coffee and food deliveries when John himself wasn’t working.

The two female security guards, both were older cowgirls who’d loved barrel racing and calf roping, but had never been quite good enough to rank, are pointing out to John which of the trailers belong to which ranch.

“There,” says Milly, pointing at a screen that showed two double-decker livestock trailers pulling onto the grounds, “those are from the Dead or Alive Ranch. They’ve got some of the best – if not _the_ best – horses in the business. And I’m not just talking about just bucking, either, they’re healthy and tend to live well into their thirties. They’re also some of the sweetest we’ve got—”

“They’re just great,” Billie says, cutting her friend off as she leans closer to the screen, “and, their manager ain’t too bad himself. There,” Billie shifts to a different screen, points to a figure hopping out of the passenger side of the first trailer, his face hidden by the wide brim of a black cowboy hat, “that’s him. Arthur’s the son or grandson of Tacitus – I can’t remember which – and he’s running things now.”

“He looks like—” John starts, cocking his head to the side, staring at that figure shaking hands with everyone and signing paperwork – the way he moved was familiar in a way that _hurt_ and John fights to crush that simple question growing louder and louder: _what if—_

And then it’s no longer a question because the man has turned to grin up at one of the cameras, waving, his lips moving to form the words, “Hey, girls.”

“Holy shit,” John breathes at the same time Milly and Billie laugh quietly and wave back to the screens.

Milly looks over at John, asks, “You okay?”

John doesn’t answer, just turns on his heels and sprints.

 

-

 

John throws open the barn doors and as soon as he feels the Quickening of another Immortal sliding under his skin – John _knows_. So he shouts, “ _Hey_ ” and Arthur – goddamned _Arthur Morgan_ – turns around and he’s saying something probably stupid that John chooses to ignore as they barrel into each other.

Arthur is solid under his hands – filled out again in a way that he hadn’t been by the time he chased John off the mountain to face his death in the dark – he’s still talking, saying John’s name over and over and it’s all John can do to just hold on, grabbing fistfuls of Arthur’s jacket and burying his face into Arthur’s shoulder and neck.

“Oh, you little fool,” Arthur is saying, his voice low and gentle. “You goddamned little fool – where’ve you been, huh? All this time? If I’d known—”

And that’s when John pulls back.

He opens his mouth to ask where Arthur himself had been – but then someone is calling for Arthur, their voice high and slightly panicked, making Arthur and John both turn to look just in time to catch sight of a large bay stallion break loose from his handler and bolt, easily dodging the other cowboys and breaking for the parking lot.

“You still know anything about horses?” Arthur asks John as he quickly retrieves the two horses he’d been leading – tossing one of the leads to John as he himself swings up onto the bare back of the other.

“Let’s go,” John says, following suit, and then they’re both off.

It’s a wild chase, but it’s over quick – the stallion calming once he was sandwiched between Arthur’s and John’s horses, Arthur talking to him softly all the while. After they deliver the wayward horse, Arthur and John dismount and Arthur passes his own two horses over to a nearby hand before he looks back at John.

And the world simply falls away as they stand there, just staring and grinning at each other, before Arthur steps back in and puts a hand on John’s shoulder. And that’s all it takes for John to lose himself to the emotion again.

He’d spent nearly a century buried away in darkness, crushed and unable to catch a breath to scream; then the years after had seen him stumbling through the strange new future he’d found himself in and, though he hadn’t been alone – not at all, not with Dr. Sutton and Wyatt and Teo – he’d still been lonely. He never did find out what’d happened to Jack nor how long it was before Abigail had joined him and Uncle up on that hilltop.

He thinks he hears someone try to come up on them once, but they leave quickly with a stern glare from Arthur.

The man himself turns away just then, says something to a hand wearing the Dead or Alive logo – a simple white skull with a black x over the forehead – on their ballcap, before he’s slinging his arm all the way around John and leading them over to a now-empty livestock trailer.

A moment of quiet stretches out between them as they sag against the trailer.

“I didn’t realize you made it,” Arthur says, digging out a cigarette pack from the breast pocket of his shirt – he hands one to John without hesitation, an old habit ingrained from when they were teens and John could never seem to keep track of his own tobacco.

“I could say the same about you,” John says, taking the cigarette and pulling a lighter from his pocket – his hands moving of their own accord as he lights first Arthur’s cigarette before his own.

“Yeah,” Arthur snorts as he looks down, scuffs a boot against the blacktop, “imagine my fucking surprise when I woke up. I was still on that mountain—”

“Charles told me he buried you,” John cuts in; for the briefest second – he imagined Arthur buried alive, trying to scream with dirt-filled lungs.

“Did he now?” Arthur asks. “He did almost run me over with his horse a couple weeks after I was supposed to be dead.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” John snaps, pushing himself off the trailer and squaring up to Arthur. “You were alive _this whole goddamned_ time?”

Arthur pauses with his cigarette butt in his lips, shifting a bit against the trailer, before he says, “A little bit. Yeah.” Then he looks down and adds, “There were times I wanted to come see you. You have no idea, John, but I was just figuring everything out. I didn’t even hear about what’d happened to you until it was too late to do anything.”

John nods, thinks back on his early training days with Wyatt and thinks he can understand, or at least begin to. “Do you,” he starts, hesitating, “do you know what happened to Abigail? Jack?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Arthur asks, his eyebrows furrowing as he cocks his head to the side.

John takes a deep breath. “I wasn’t—let’s just say I didn’t wake up in time for someone to realize I wasn’t exactly as dead as I looked. I’ve been in my grave until about nine years ago.”

Arthur’s face twists into something ugly at that. “Fuck, John.”

John nods, says, “Yeah.” He takes a drag of his cigarette before he throws it to the ground and stomps it out with his boot.

“Abigail died a couple years after you did,” Arthur says. “A fever, I think. Then soon’s he had her buried, Jack went hunting for the agent who had you killed. Found him in Mexico and killed him. Charles went looking for him after he’d heard, but the law had caught up with him. Jack was wounded in a shootout outside of St. Denis before lawmen strung him up in the swamps.”

The news twists like a knife in John’s heart. Jack was supposed to be a new beginning – John and Abigail had made the boy swear he’d grow up to be better than them, to live a simpler and gentler kind of life that stayed on the right side of the law.

“Charles tried to get his body back so he could be buried next to you and Abigail, but,” Arthur shrugs his shoulders – he didn’t need to say it.

“He wasn’t—” John gestures between himself and Arthur.

“No,” Arthur says immediately, shaking his head as he stubs out his own cigarette, “no, he wasn’t like us.”

 “Not like us,” he says to himself. Arthur looks over at him and scoffs, knowing exactly what John was saying: Jack wasn’t like them, except in the ways that he was – and those ways had gotten him killed. Just like it had them.

John scrubs a hand over his face.

“You know,” he says with a heavy sigh as he glares at Arthur, “I just wanted to buy a horse today. That’s all.”

“Well, boy,” Arthur says, tugging at John’s shirt, “you’re in luck. I’m here to sell some.”

 

-

 

John leaves the ramshackle duplex he’d been renting and takes his horses from the rings’ stables and they all move out to Arthur’s Dead or Alive Ranch. The ranch itself had three locations: California, Alberta, and New Hanover.

California had been the original property and was used primarily as a Hollywood tourist hotspot, where western film fanatics could see where horses used by the likes of John Wayne and James Garner and Clint Eastwood were born and raised.

Alberta was where most of the breeding was done with Arthur having three herds running semi-wild over several hundred acres – comprised mostly of Quarter Horses and retired racing Thoroughbreds for athleticism, as well as the occasional draft horse for size. Come spring, Arthur heads up there and picks which of the yearlings would be brought down to New Hanover for breaking and training.

The New Hanover property is another hundred acres, filled with barns and paddocks and training rings. Arthur himself breaks every horse who’s trucked in, using that process to decide the horse’s future job in the rodeo. Those horses who weren’t quite ready were sent back to Alberta for another year to “find themselves,” he called it.

When John turns the truck off and jumps out, he takes in the house before him. As Arthur walks out the front door to greet him, John calls out, “Did you build this place yourself or did you just have someone truck Shady Belle out the swamps for ya?” The only difference between this place and Shady were the columns had been done away with, in their stead was an enclosed porch, complete with screening.

Arthur snorts, but he doesn’t deny anything. John considers pushing, teasing, but there was something else he needed to do first. He turns back to his truck and grabs a large Ziploc bag.

“You know,” he calls out as he straightens up and turns to face Arthur, the man himself staring curiously at what was in John’s hands, “I was just about to call around to one of these western history museums – see if any of ‘em would take this.”

“Is that--?” Arthur starts.

“Yeah,” John says with a nod, suddenly self-conscious as he cradles the bag before he forces himself to turn it over. “I tried to pick up where you left off – but, I, uh, I never quite had the knack you did for this stuff. Abigail and Jack buried it with me.”

Arthur holds the bag gingerly, staring down at the journal contained within it, looking for all the world like someone had just taken his legs from him. Then he’s sharing a grin with John as he jerks his head back towards the house.

“C’mon, John,” Arthur says, “let’s get a drink and have ourselves a little look-see.”

 

-

 

They empty a bottle of whiskey between them before they’re even half-way through the book – the memories burning bright and vivid as they carefully turn each page, following Arthur’s thoughts from those first few days after the ferry job in Blackwater all the way to John’s careful writings about collecting the last of the dinosaur bones.

“Speaking of,” Arthur laughs, standing to fetch them more whiskey, “have you started catching up on any movies that’ve come out?”

“I’ve seen _Jurassic Park_ if that’s what you’re gettin’ at,” John says. “Wyatt, my teacher, made it a point to have me all caught up on what he’d called ‘cultural markers’.” John accentuates the words with finger quotes and an inflected tone.

“Good man,” Arthur says, setting a second bottle between them.

They spend the rest of the night reflecting on the past, carefully avoiding talking about the future and the sword John still has in his truck and the one Arthur’s got hiding behind the door of his bedroom.

 

-

 

John alternates working pickup at Triple Vortex and learning all he can from Arthur about his breeding and training of rough stock – working until he knows each animal if not by sight, then by number. John plans to use the information to work his way from pickup man to flankman, and from flankman to chute boss.

Arthur takes the journal to a local university to have it looked at by western scholars, who beg him to either donate or loan it to them for study. Arthur decides on the latter on the condition that his own name never be revealed under any circumstances; the university readily agrees.

Several months later, Arthur is bent over double with laughter, tears in his eyes, as he tries to read a letter from the History Channel, forwarded to him by the university, to John – History wanted permission to make a miniseries based on the contents of the journal. Arthur is still chuckling to himself as he grabs a red sharpie and scrawls over the letter, in big blocky handwriting: NO, before he puts it in a new envelope, puts a stamp on it, and tosses it into a tray labeled _outgoing_.

 

-

 

Arthur and John settle quick into their routines and the years of distance between them seem like nothing at all. They move around each other as easily as wind through prairie grass, the flowing conversations alternate naturally with comfortable silences that sometimes stretch for hours – and it all acts as a salve, smoothing John’s roughened edges.

But his favorite moments are the little ones.

Moments like when he’s not working and he’s wandering Dead or Alive at dusk, the air filled with the scent of horses and hay and leather and all the sounds of the ranch, and Arthur is right beside him, sometimes talking, sometimes not, and they’re passing a flask between them, and it’s them – it’s just _them_.

 

-z-

 

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All rodeos mentioned are fictitious but based off of the author’s state fairgrounds. 
> 
> Definitions below for those not familiar with rodeo terminology. I’m using “cowboy” as a generic moniker for male and female rodeo workers and contestants.  
> \--string: the personal reserve of horses a cowboy can pull from for a day’s work/ride; depending on the work and how successful a cowboy is, a string could be one to two horses, or up to six or seven  
> \--pickup men: the two cowboys who flank a bucking horse and its rider after the ride is complete, one helps the contestant off as the other pulls the flank strap from the bucking horse  
> \--flank strap: a sheepskin-covered strap that is tied around a horse’s flanks, just behind the barrel and just in front of the hindlegs, to encourage bucking rather than rearing  
> \--flankman: works in the chute with the chute boss and stock contractors and is responsible for tying the flank strap just right around the animal – meaning they must know the animal thoroughly and how tight/loose the flank strap needs to be  
> \--chute boss: just what it sounds like, they’re the boss of the chute and manage whoever is coming into and leaving the chute, animal and person alike.
> 
> In case anyone is concerned about a rodeo animals' welfare: all rodeo critters are very well taken care of! The animals don't actually work that much and, in order for them to perform (i.e., bucking) they have to be happy and healthy. An overworked/hurt animal won't work and there's simply no way to fake it. Cowboys can and have had points deducted if they injure an animal during a ride or rope. 
> 
> If there are any other questions, just holler.


End file.
